Australia’s Coalition opposition has staked out a hard-line new immigration platform, promising that every foreign visitor – from tourists to temporary workers – would have to submit their social-media handles for screening as part of the visa process. In a speech at the Menzies Institute on 13 April, shadow home-affairs spokesperson Angus Taylor argued that existing checks are “naïve” and leave the country exposed to applicants with “subversive intent”. Under the proposal, Department of Home Affairs case-officers would be authorised to trawl applicants’ public posts looking for extremist sympathies, violent imagery or statements deemed incompatible with “Australian values”. Non-discriminatory visa processing – a cornerstone of policy since the 1970s – would effectively be replaced by a “values-based” system modelled on measures introduced in the United States during the Trump administration. The Coalition says it would also resurrect temporary-protection visas, lengthen waiting periods for migrants to access social-security benefits and create a “safe-country list” that fast-tracks rejections from nations judged low-risk for refoulement. Funding would be set aside to expand the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s vetting team and to embed Border Force officers in social-platform trust-and-safety units. If implemented, the plan could dramatically lengthen processing times for leisure and short-term business travellers. Corporates that rotate staff through Australia on short assignments may have to factor in new disclosure obligations and reputational due-diligence on employees’ online activity. Industry groups have already warned that blanket screening risks deterring high-value visitors and complicating reciprocal visa-waiver negotiations. For now, the policy is campaign rhetoric – but with migration a top-tier political issue, companies with Australia-facing mobility programmes should monitor whether Labor adopts partial measures ahead of the May budget.
Source: The Guardian
